Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/22

10 his eyes, brushed the ashes from his cigar with the tip of his little finger. The man at the speaker's right smiled quietly over at his vis-a-vis, and then there was a silence for a moment.

The freighter and the prospector, leaning on the bar, paid no attention to the four men who sat and smoked by the little pine table in a dark corner of the log saloon. The "Lone Spruce," as the place was called, had done a rushing business in the boom days, but Ruby Camp was dying, even as Silver Cliff, Gunnison, and dozens of other camps have died since—as Creede is dying to-day—and business was slow. A drunken Ute reeled in and wanted to play poker, shake dice, or shoot with any dog of a white man in the place. When all the rest had put him aside coldly he came over to the corner, and the dark man, being deep in thought and not wishing to be disturbed, arose, and, picking his way between the two guns which dangled from the hips of the noble red man, kicked him along down the room and out into the night.

Having done his duty in removing the red